Between SUNY Potsdam’s study abroad trips and travel courses, there’s no shortage of opportunities to learn about other cultures. The College’s inaugural travel course to Finland and Sweden is a prime example. Offered through the teacher education program, students recently embarked on a journey to Northern Europe with the goal of examining different education systems and comparing them to the education system here in the U.S.
From May 20 to 27 Marta Albert, an associate professor and coordinator of SUNY Potsdam’s literacy program, and Carolyn Stone, an instructor in the program, took seven students and three alumni to study in Finland and Sweden through EF Educational Tours. For Albert, it was a very important opportunity to provide “a travel experience that would help our education students think through a comparative lens about their own development as teachers,” she said.
Stone echoed that sentiment. She knew that there weren’t a lot of study abroad opportunities for education students—something she hopes to change. “I just thought this would be a great opportunity for our students to see another culture and another education system, one that in 50 years has turned its education system around,” Stone said.
Students conducted extensive research about Finnish and Swedish teaching styles leading up to the trip. One of the required readings, “Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms,” by Timothy Walker, created the framework for the course. After they arrived in Finland, the group met up with Walker, an educator from Boston who now lives and teaches in the country, to discuss his perspective on the two education systems.
For early childhood / childhood education major Jamie Mercier ’18, meeting Walker was the highlight of the trip. “He was able to tell us the differences between teaching in the United States and Finland and it was just really interesting to be able to talk to him. He was there for us to ask questions, to further our intellectual knowledge of the Finnish school system,” she said.
Stone also emphasized the benefit of meeting Walker. “His book has very practical ideas for how to incorporate some of what they do in Finland, right here in U.S. schools. I think that was really valuable for our students.”
During their trip, the group visited two schools in Espoo, a city bordering the Finnish capital of Helsinki. Their first stop was at Mainingin Koulu, a combined primary and middle school for Grades 1 through 9, where the local Finnish students gave them guided tours. “I think the most amazing part was that these kids were eighth and ninth-graders, and they were able to lead us through their school and give us a tour in English—not their native language—and tell us all about their school and answer all of our questions,” Mercier said.
The other school in Espoo, Tenava Tilli Daycare, allowed SUNY Potsdam students to observe pre-school education in an outdoor setting. For one lesson, Mercier observed children collecting rocks, leaves and sticks and then meeting with their teacher to examine what they had found. “They have no pressure to learn to read yet; it’s all just playing and learning through play. It was really cool. They were outside, it didn’t matter about the weather,” Mercier explained.
During the trip, SUNY Potsdam students and alumni learned teaching techniques that could be incorporated into their own classrooms back in the U.S., techniques such as “brain breaks.” “For every 45-minute lesson in Finland, they take a 15-minute break and the kids go outside. Everything is in lessons, not these 90-minute literacy sessions (like we have in the U.S.) Your brain cannot handle that much without some sort of a break,” Stone said.
In Finland, Mercier said that “the kids are learning how to cook and do dishes. They’re learning how to sew and play sports. All of the students are learning to sew or work in tech classes with woodworking. It seems like they were getting a more authentic experience, and not just being taught to pass a test,” Mercier said.
They also toured both countries’ capitals, which allowed the SUNY Potsdam students to learn valuable information about the nations’ economic systems, how they deal with homelessness, and how they fund education and child development. “I think that all provided a rich context for our students,” Albert said.
To wrap up the course, Albert and Stone had their students reflect on their experience by writing a re-think essay. “We asked them to go back to the original application that they wrote to participate in the program and we gave them a loose structure for the kinds of ideas that we hoped that they would revisit and synthesize. The essays that we’re getting are just really fabulous, they’re really covering all sorts of terrain,” Albert said.
Now back in the U.S., Mercier and her classmates plan to incorporate some of the Finnish and Swedish teaching techniques in their own classrooms, either during student teaching placements or in their future classrooms as full-time teachers.
For more information about the Department of Teacher Education, visit: www.potsdam.edu/academics/SOEPS/education